Artificial intelligence, once again in question: not for the quality of what it produces or for the threat it poses to certain professions, but for its colossal energy needs. Today, it would even be one of the main obstacles to even more rapid development.
In just a few years, artificial intelligence could consume as much energy as a country like Sweden, the Netherlands or Argentina. This is one of the conclusions of a doctorate published in mid-October, in Amsterdam.
Just Google Search connected to BARD, chatGPT’s in-house competitor, could require as much electricity as the whole of Ireland by 2027, in the most extreme scenario: that in which NVIDIA, the main manufacturer of servers dedicated to AI would succeed in meeting demand, which is not the case: we are talking about tens of billions of dollars of investment, just for Google. Scenario ruled out, therefore, but only very temporarily, and that is not good for the planet, knowing that energy production is responsible for three-quarters of greenhouse gas emissions.
As much energy as Sweden
What do these energy needs represent, on our individual scale? A single computer server, dedicated to AI, consumes as much energy as a dozen individual houses. So, imagine a million and a half of these servers in 2027, since that’s one of the projections.
Within four years, AI could – in fact – swallow up as much energy as bitcoin is, annually, a hundred terawatt-hours, which is equivalent to more or less 100 billion KW-hours. We know that cryptocurrencies, which rely on millions of connected computers, are particularly electricity-intensive. Need for electricity, therefore, but not only that: you also need water, a lot of water, to run artificial intelligence, and to cool computers and computer servers.
chatGPT is “thirsty”, very “thirsty”
Just for chatGPT, OpenAI’s generative artificial intelligence, which can be asked questions, this need is equivalent to a bottle of water for 20 to 50 questions. However, in less than a year, the AI phenomenon has just passed the 10 billion visits mark. Let’s assume that each visit only gave rise to three questions, which is undoubtedly very far from reality, we are talking about the equivalent of a billion liters of water used: the equivalent of 400 Olympic swimming pools . And it’s “only” chatGPT without including other AIs.
Hence the importance of encouraging moderation in the use of these generative and conversational artificial intelligences that many tend to use for requests that do not need them.